


He is

by Saetha



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stuck Falcon, Winter Soldiers, damn that IW teaser got me so good it had me screaming after only 2 seconds of bucky's face lmao, lots of others mentioned - Freeform, slow healing, what do u mean that isn't their official shipping name shush it is now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 16:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11650404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saetha/pseuds/Saetha
Summary: He is. The Winter Soldier first, then no one, then someone, then Barnes, then Bucky. Somehow, the threads of past and present weave themselves together again and a new life is built were the old ones have all crumbled.





	He is

**Author's Note:**

> Wooooooooooo yeah the Marvel bug has bitten me yet again. 2 seconds of Bucky's face in the IW teaser were enough to set me screaming and I realised just how much I ship this damn OT3 still/again/forever probably.

 

 

i.

He is the Winter Soldier.

He doesn't know that he is, has never heard the name before, a name that speaks of violence and destiny all mixed with a sense of duty that doesn't exist. There is nothing honourable about being the Winter Soldier. Nothing dutiful. Just death.

He is like a bullet, destroying wherever he is pointed once fired. Humans do not exist; they are targets or bystanders in his mind, never people. Or those who sent him, but those who sent him could as well be God from the power they hold over him. And where they want him he goes, always following, never questioning because he has learnt early on that questions lead to nothing that isn't pain and anger directed at him.

Time is only relevant when he needs to adapt to however many years have passed since he has last woken up. New technology, new alliances, new data. All poured into the freshly wiped Winter Soldier's head, filling a blank slate with everything that was necessary, yet never too much. Too much information was dangerous; too much information let the Winter Soldier think and thinking beyond his mission was unwelcome.

He rolls his shoulder, then steadies his breathing. The voices through the com in his ears have ceded to a mere buzz - he knows what he's doing and how. The only variable left is the _when_. The car should be coming down the road any second and the Winter Solider slowly readies his weapon.

There it is.

Time slows to a crawl, the reactions almost mechanic in their precision. Shoot. Wait for the hit. Wait for the car to flip. Step aside so as not to get hit - not out of self-preservation, but because they will be angry if they have to repair him again. See if the target is dead.

The target is not.

Mission failed.

The Winter Soldier shivers and considers his next steps.

 

ii.

He is no one.

He doesn't know who he is. The man on the bridge is there, in his thoughts, wherever he goes. There had been a name on his lips, cutting sharply through his memories just like the pain in his eyes. The name means nothing to him and everything - it has pushed the Winter Soldier away but left nothing to replace it.

The man on the bridge has thrown him into a strange vacuum, somewhere between the orders he is supposed to follow and the clamouring of old memories in his head, memories that should have fallen victim Hydra long ago. Maybe the other self, back when he hadn't lost it completely, has managed to store them away before the wipes could get at them. But now they are back, scratching at his thoughts like mice in a wall, showing him faces he doesn't remember yet, voices he cannot identify and making him feel more than just the desire to complete a mission. Even when they wipe him they cannot extinguish them all and he tries not to scream when he sees Steve Rogers' face again.

His body is still carrying out his mission, drilled into his brain with an urgency so important that not obeying it would feel like death. Or maybe it wouldn't; he isn't entirely sure anymore what his mind is doing and what it isn't. All he knows is that when Rogers says 'to the end of the line', something inside him lurches and breaks away and all of a sudden it becomes hard to breathe.

And maybe he does stop breathing after all, maybe his mind stops working for when he can think again he is holding Steve Rogers by the collar, dragging him out of the river and ignoring the screaming of his own body that has gone through too much too quickly. He doesn't quite know what to do once he stands in the squelching sand-mud mixture at the riverside, looking down at Steve Rogers. Thoughts are still hard to come by - where the winter soldier once sat in there is nothing but deathly silence right now and he doesn't know how to fill it.

 

iii.

He is someone.

He still doesn't know who - the Winter Soldier and the man once known as 'Bucky' are both dead and he has to figure out who it is that is walking around in his skin now. He tries to fill the void by doing research - the exhibit in the Smithsonian, books, the internet. What he finds is as much speculation as it is fact oftentimes. He develops a game for himself - each fact that he reads, he tries to remember whether it's truth or lie.

 _Steve Rogers was sickly and small before the serum turned him into a super soldier_. True. He can remember him coughing, remembers giving him his jacket in winter when they were both shivering. He can also remember the constant worry and hoping that, just this once, the flu wave coming through the city won't hit Steve.

 _Bucky Barnes loved going out with the girls; had one on each finger_. Wrong. He does remember going out with girls, yes, but usually one at a time; and he also remembers kissing more than one boy and of that the sources are strangely silent.

 _Bucky Barnes died_. Wrong. True. Both. He still doesn't know.

There are a few things he knows for sure though - one, that he likes plums. Two, that he hates being cold. Three, that he likes rain, likes the way it seems to dampen the entire world around him, put a barrier between him and the rest. Four, that he doesn't want to be found.

Find him, however, they do, even if it is only because someone is trying to use him again. Now, when he sees Steve, there is barely time to think before the instincts kick in. He still doesn't know whether he welcomes the change in his life, welcomes the way Steve looks at him as if he would shatter at any moment or the way Tony Stark looks at him like a monster. (And he is right, he is right, a monster he is, he killed Stark's parents, killed countless others and although Hydra is gone the victims remain, each death branded into his memory with stark and painful clarity)

He tries to feel something when Stark tears out his arm, but all he can find within himself is a strange relief that it's finally over and a pang of sadness that Steve had to be pulled into it. They should have stayed in Brooklyn, both of them, should have remained there until they someday dropped dead in their sleep and then maybe Stark's gaze wouldn't be a raw and gaping wound and Steve wouldn't look like he's getting torn apart inside.

 

iv.

He is James Buchanan Barnes.

It is strange, thinking about himself like that. It is still a name that he associates mostly with a figure from history, the shining pictures in the Smithsonian perhaps or the romanticised accounts of the howling commandos. And yet the others keep calling him that - 'Barnes', mostly, sometimes Bucky.

They've taken him back out of the ice only weeks after putting him in although Steve never tells him whose idea it was. He just knows he's grateful - the someone who he was after fighting against Stark hadn't known what he wanted. Couldn't have known, with thoughts that spiralled out of control and left him throwing up in the bathroom until Steve came and draped a towel over his neck.

As it turns out, Steve isn't living alone. The Falcon is there with him and Barnes is still wary at first, remembering well that Sam Wilson isn't anyone to fuck around with. And yet, his presence is good; he helps adding new memories, helps fill the space of Barnes' thoughts with something that he desperately needs, something that isn't ice, or killing or a past that'll never come back.

The first time he cries out and locks himself in the bathroom because the smell of burning wet wood reminds him of corpses in a Siberian hut and the body of a little boy falling from his metal fingers, it's Sam who's there. Not Steve who is out on a mission, not Nat who doesn't know how to deal with these things herself, but Sam who doesn't judge, just talks to him slowly and steadily until the desperate need to slam his head into the mirror and bloody its shards had passed. It used to be his job, Barnes finds out later, and he doesn't know whether it makes it better or worse. Maybe he's just one of Sam's jobs then. Another one of the dozens of broken tools he must have seen in his lifetime.

But Sam doesn't stop being there and Steve doesn't stop either, even when it seems like everything has been for naught, even when he wakes up in the morning with nothing but blood and cold on his mind and wanting to tear his new metal arm right out of its socket again. When Steve looks at him as if the sight of Barnes is making his heart burst into splinters, Sam is practical and seems to know what he needs. When Sam's lips go tight and he thinks of Riley, when he cannot know what Barnes is talking about because he wasn't even born when it happened Steve is there and helps him bring back life to a time long since gone.

And when both Steve and Sam seem as if dark clouds have taken up residence in their minds it's Barnes who attempts to make pancakes or tells them a bad joke he thought he picked up somewhere.

Somewhere, somehow, he begins to knit himself back together again amongst all the chaos and thoughts and the madness that is happening in the world.

 

v.

He is Bucky.

A name whispered in the darkness of the night, sheets rustling as they paint a song around them that doesn't need language to be understood. A name called out in greeting when Sam or Steve come home, a name spoken with love and with care and sometimes, with amused anger when he's put Steve's white shirt with his black socks in the washing machine again.

It feels good to be Bucky. Not quite right, still, but then it'll probably never feel right since the Bucky of the past is gone. But this new Bucky, he has taken the pieces of everything he has lived and managed to mould something new out of it, something that is capable of emotion, of loving and be loved.

And, most importantly, Bucky is not alone.

There is Steve, just like Bucky both the little boy from Brooklyn still and the man that the war and Hydra have made. But his laugh is still the same, as is the way he tilts his head when he isn't happy with something Bucky suggests, but doesn't want to say anything.

There is Sam who has somehow flown his way into his heart, all dry humour and an understanding voice when it's needed. Bucky doesn't know anybody else so obviously made to fly; they complement each other well, the killing machine he used to be and the pilot who saw his best friend die.

There is Stark, who Bucky will never feel easy around but who has made him a new arm and who he sees from time to time when he drops into the mansion to answer one of Steve's calls for help or drop off some new invention or other.

There is Nat, who Bucky still feels he should know more than he does but who keeps quiet about what, if anything, they share. Nat, who he can talk to in Russian and who understands when he dredges up another memory of Hydra that should have stayed hidden.

There is Bruce, who is quiet and shy, often sequestered in a corner of their living room when he comes to visit, but who is just as afraid at times of the beast lurking inside him as Bucky is. It's good to know that there is someone else here who can come back when he has gone over the edge.

There are Sharon and Maria, Wanda and Vision, Peter and Clint, Thor and Coulson, T'Challa and Scott and Daisy, so many names, so many memories that are made a new. Sometimes, Bucky simply lets himself fall into this sea of new names, lets himself drown in a future that he has never before imagined. He smiles when he does, knowing that there is a Bucky now that can go with them, a Bucky who is more than his past.

A Bucky who simply is.

 


End file.
